Word.ws English Dictionary

played house

played house is the simple past and past participle of play house.

Meaning of play house

Verb

play house (third-person singular simple present plays house, present participle playing house, simple past and past participle played house)

  1. (children's games) To pretend to be a family in the household, acting out housekeeping and different family roles.
    • They can keep all their things there and play house in their own way.
  2. To live as if married without actually being legally married, cohabit
    • Though she flaunted her affair with TJ, Grace never admitted in print that she and George had “played house” before their marriage. Instead, she claimed they were married in 19421981, Emily Toth, Inside Peyton Place: the life of Grace Metalious, page 209

See all 5 meanings of play house

Questions about played house

What is played house the simple past and past participle of?
Played house is the simple past and past participle of play house.

Words near played house in the dictionary

  1. played havoc
  2. played hell with
  3. played hob with
  4. played hooky
  5. played host to
  6. played house
  7. played in
  8. played in Peoria
  9. played into someone's hand
  10. played into someone's hands
  11. played into the hand of

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: played house (page history and authors); play house (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “played house.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/played_house. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.